


Give Me Some Morphine

by excapricious



Series: Just Let Me Know (I'll Be At the Door) [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Bad Communication, Codependency, Drinking, Fighting, Friendship, Love, M/M, Marijuana, Mentions of Sex, Trouble Sleeping, boys who are bad at sharing their feelings, complicated adult emotions, complicated relationship, mental health, messy love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 10:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11507343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excapricious/pseuds/excapricious
Summary: It's not like he hasn't tried to love him less.





	Give Me Some Morphine

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic of this pairing! Comments are so, so appreciated. Thank you for reading!

The heat is crushing, pulverizing, giving Rafael the same heavy feeling on his chest that he’d had when he came down with pneumonia last winter and was too sick to get out of bed for a week. He'd woken up thinking he was dying. That the world was ending. It feels that way now, like the sun that's beating and crashing and pouring into Rafael’s lungs and limbs and mouth, force-feeding him sick-sweet honey, won't stop beating until the world burns. Down, down, down. Rafael swallows around his mouthful of poison honey, breathes slow and even to force the singeing air through him. He feels all wrong. Exhausted, but more than that. Inside out, emptied, drained. There's a whole world full of words, and Rafael is a word boy, he lives bathed and soaked and drowned in them, but he can't find one that touches the feeling inside him. He’s off. He doesn't know if it's the heat, which he should be able to handle after California, but like Daveed says, New York winters made him soft. Daveed. Yeah. Maybe it's him. 

He's drunk like Rafa hasn't seen him in years (he always says that he's getting too old- Rafael is usually the one goading him into another shot). He's drunk, but not in a funny way, not in the way where he's making awful, awful jokes and tickling Rafa in the ribs and grinning all dopey at everyone who makes eye contact. Drunk in the way that comes after too much of a bottle of Hennessy on top of no sleep and anti-anxiety meds. Stupid. Rafael shouldn't even be letting him drink. But he arrived here at Anthony’s feeling awful, heat-sick and tired and wrong. And when Daveed walked onto the back porch with Groff and Lin and saw him (Rafael could see Daveed seeing him, reading him, could see his brows bunch just slightly in concern) but didn't even attempt to help, to say something, anything to him, Rafael crawled deep within himself and poured rat poison on every part of him that cared about Daveed and preventing Daveed from making bad decisions. 

There's a fly on the outside wall of the house, crawling so slowly that it's agonizing to watch. It makes Rafael too upset, somehow, more irritated and anxious than he should be about a fly on the wall. He's sitting at a table, away from the rest of the group. Not enough away that anyone should feel the need to come over and try to pull him back into the mess of people laughing and drinking and talking a few decibels too loud. But away. It's always been easy for him to fall into feeling like an outcast, a misfit, with this group. He's the only one at most of these parties not in Hamilton, the only one without that invisible badge of a bond that ties the others together with a spider-silk string. But usually, always, Daveed is there, pulling him into conversation, loosening him up until stories are flowing out of him and people are listening and Rafa feels like the spider string has him webbed up in it too, maybe just looped around his ankle. And today, Daveed just isn't, he's not there. And Rafa has no idea why. 

—

Beanbag toss, Anthony’s dumbass idea. Drinking game beanbag toss, a complicated tournament system that's worked out on a whiteboard that Jasmine drags out from the house. Lightning rounds, only up to fifteen points, with each person playing every other person once, and the winners of those games doing the same again. And on, and on. Bets on each rounds, winners taking shots. It's the sort of thing Rafael would normally love, be all over. Normally he'd be up at that whiteboard, dictating pairings and rounds and devising systems and going as hardass as possible on this game of beanbag toss. But he's so tired. He's so tired of sneaking looks at Daveed, who's just getting louder as he drinks, more physical. Aggressive, almost, checking Chris with a shoulder and a barking laugh. It makes Rafael’s skin crawl. He just nods with a smile, the most he can muster, when Pippa practically dances over to ask him if he's in. She looks at him for a moment, worry on her face, but doesn't ask. He's grateful in the same breath that he wants to cry. Maybe he does just want to be held, told that it'll be okay. 

Daveed would do that for him. Rafa wouldn't even have to ask- after a decade of barely being apart for more than a month at a time, they can read each other like street signs. Daveed knows when Rafael is feeling antsy or off or like something broke inside him, and he hauls Rafa into a bone crushing hug that somehow mends a lot of things at once. Sometimes, the best times, Daveed will rub Rafa’s back, massage the bad mood right out of him. They'll get takeout and watch shitty made-for-tv movies and Rafa will feel better. That's where he wishes they were, safe in his dark apartment and a too big t-shirt of Daveed’s. Not here, please, not here. 

“Casal!” It's Anthony, flushed and giggly with beers. “Get up, man. You trippin?” It's just like Anthony to think that Rafa being quiet means he's having a bad shrooms trip. 

“Nah, just,” Rafael waves his hand, the sentence falling flat without an ending. Anthony stands and looks at him for a second, eyebrows raised in a question. Rafa can practically feel his confused disappointment, and it makes him sick to his stomach. Geez, Casal. Can't you stop moping like a little bitch because you're depressed or something and your friend is ignoring you? Rafa can read it on Anthony’s face, looks down at his own hands instead. They're quieter. 

“Okay, well… if you wanna play we've got you in the, uh,” Anthony looks over his shoulder to consult the whiteboard, “fourth round. And have a drink, loosen up.” He's not saying it like an accusation, but that's how Rafa hears it. God, he should just go. He's intruding anyway- who does he think he is? He isn't part of Hamilton. He isn't one of them. He's Daveed’s fucking pity plus-one. He should go.

Instead, he gets up from the table, the heat making him lightheaded. (Has he eaten anything today? He's not sure.) He slams a beer and relishes the feeling of dissolving into flames as his throat burns. He lets Oak slap his back and Renee squeeze him around the shoulders and doesn't cry even one tear. His eyes burn and he lights up so he can pretend for himself that it's just the cigarette smoke. 

He wins his round of beanbag toss, against Groff. He just looks at the nets and lobs his beanbags and hits fours and fives almost exclusively. When Jonathan gapes and the others cheer for him, he says something about playing baseball in school. He never played baseball. He got his aim from hurling darts at a board on his garage door. A friend in the bay died, by gun or bottle or needle in a vein. Two hundred thwacks against the board with everything else blocked out until his arm ached. His girlfriend at the time got pregnant. Two hundred more, a replacement for crying when he felt so helpless he wanted to break down. Rafael doesn't cry, didn't then, doesn't now. Maybe he's a monster. But. Daveed gives him a look. He knows Rafael didn't play baseball. But. 

Rafael watches the others throw and miss and laugh. He places bets and takes shots until everything goes hazy and warm through his vision. He follows Daveed with the corner of his eye. He's wearing a shirt that Rafa bought for him four or five Christmases ago, black with white on the pocket and telltale holes of wear and age at the hem. His hair is a mess, but in a way that looks perfectly intentional. It's like Daveed’s hair flies just to please him. His eyes are red with dark craters under them, and the harder Rafa focuses, the worse he looks. Inside out, emptied, drained. He really shouldn't be drinking, Rafael notes without making a move to stop it. Daveed wins his round too, against Pippa. He's throwing hard, angry, and it unsettles Rafa. Lately, that's been his primary emotion. Unsettled. Daveed getting hurled up to stardom with barely a moment’s notice, unsettling. The move to New York, where it snows in the winters and the streets are bustling and his family is across the country, unsettling. Daveed ignoring him like he isn't there. Very unsettling. Rafael takes a breath. That's something the internet told him would help, results of a Google search shortly after Daveed found out he was nominated for a Tony and his exuberant laughter turned into gasps turned to sobs turned to Rafael holding him desperately on the bathroom floor. That wasn't the first time that had happened, wasn't the last. Daveed didn't slow down enough, didn't take care of himself in the way he should. Rafael told him that, and he laughed at him, called him a hypocrite. Rafa knows it's true, but somehow it's easier to care about somebody else. He supposes that’s Daveed’s point. 

“Okay, okay,” Oak is slurring a bit, raising a bottle into the painful blue sky. “Me, Lin, Rafa, Ariana, Diggs, Renee, Jas.” Everyone whoops but Rafael’s brain is going too slow to put that list of names in a place. “We all moving up to the next fuckin’ bracket. Ant, man, you got that set up?” Anthony is grumbling something about losing and Jasmine is gloating and god, they're all so loud. This happens to Rafael sometimes, when he gets into his head and starts drowning and even the sounds of teeth in the chips they're all eating start grinding just below the nape of his neck until he wants to scream. The alcohol isn't waking him up, just suppressing his tongue, silencing him as everyone else buzzes around him like a hive. 

Daveed laughs, loud, at something that Lin says. Rafael thinks, for a moment, that he's walking towards him, but he's going for the cooler that sits at the table. They meet eyes, and Rafael immediately flicks his down to his open, empty palms. He doesn't know why he can't just grab Daveed and pull him to the side, demand an explanation. They've been best friends for more than ten years, and Rafa should be able to just. Talk to him. He can't. 

Lin mixes Rafael a drink, something with whiskey and a lot of lime, patting his shoulder a few times in an uncertain attempt to comfort. The drink goes down, along with another, and another after it. People aren't looking directly at him. He notices it, the wayward glances laced with guilt, like they all know someone should come over but no one wants to be the one to go. Rafael knows he's ruining the party, at the very least putting a damper on it by sitting hunched inside himself and drinking too much (except he doesn't taste what he's swallowing, or feel it) and silently staring across the patio at Daveed with his eyes burning. He should leave. He should leave. But then Ant is yelling his name, his and Daveed’s, and it feels like a sucker punch to the gut when it gets through Rafael’s fogged up head that they're playing each other, this round. 

“C’mon, get up there!” Jas is yelling. “Wanna see the bay boys duke it out!” Rafael doesn't want to duke it out. He doesn't want anything to do with Daveed. Except he wants everything to do with Daveed. He stands and stumbles, legs and stomach and head feeling like rough water, like the days at the California coast with Daveed where they'd bob in the water just where the waves broke and let themselves be tossed and pounded and washed away. Lin (when did he come over here?) catches Rafael by the arm.

“Rafa. Can I take you home?” The saltwater, pouring over his head, erasing everything and leaving a clean, empty, nonexistent slate. Lin’s voice sounds far away. 

“I'm drunk, Lin.”

“Yes, yeah, you are. Let me take you home. You aren't yourself.” Rafael laughs, and it's harsh. When they'd breach the surface of the water, lungs burning, hair matted with sand. Finding Daveed’s home-base face and whooping, laughing at and about and for their lives, that moment. Lin squeezes his arm. 

“No, nah, I gotta play beanbag toss.” 

Rafael throws first. The alcohol isn't enough to damp down the muscle memory of throwing darts that screams in his shoulder. He hits the top hole, five points, hears the cheers from the crowd as Renee writes his score on the whiteboard. Daveed spits in the grass. Rafael wants to cry. Daveed is against him, against-against him, for what feels like the first time in the years they've been inseparable. 

Daveed is sloppy-drunk, misses the board altogether. He's pissed off, and Rafael feels himself shrinking. Alice in Wonderland. He wonders which drink the cake was in. He throws. Three. Daveed. It skids on the board, stops before hitting a hole. Daveed swigs his beer, looks at Rafael with cold, horrible eyes. Rafael, Daveed, Rafael, Daveed. Rafa hits fifteen points first, a landslide. Oak slaps his shoulder. Rafael sets down the drink he's holding to go, find somewhere to smoke a blunt in private. 

___ 

No one comes after him. Rafael pretends not to hear Lin talk Renee and Pippa down, blocks out the “leave him alone”, the “he's fine, let him be”. He's probably not fine. He's probably not been fine for a good while now. His hands shake as he lights the blunt, rolled sloppy and sad. Daveed's hands shake, sometimes. Speeches. The first song of a set, before he gets into it and it's like a whole new person is birthed from his throat. Rafael holds them when they shake. 

He smokes, doesn't cry even though he almost wants to at this point. Just to relieve the pressure on his eyes. No one comes. He can hear them, cheering and laughing. He can hear Daveed's voice. Realizes everyone here knows Daveed because of his voice. Doesn't have anything to do with that thought and crumbles it under his heel with the burnt out blunt. He stands there for a long time, watching the sky change color. He remembers something he saw one time, probably on an aunt's Facebook. “Every time an artist dies, God lets them paint the sky.” He remembers snorting at it. Rafael doesn't believe in God. This sunset isn't even that pretty. Light pollution, something. It's not cold but he feels chilly when the sun sets. 

“Rafael.” Daveed. Rafa doesn't turn around. He's silent, not because he wants to be petty. Just because he can't, not right now. He doesn't trust his words. “Ya have a blunt?” Rafael doesn't say anything. Maybe if he ignores him long enough, he’ll disappear. That's what Rafael thinks happened to him. Daveed overlooked him for so long that he really did become invisible. 

“Man. I.” Rafael waits for him to finish the sentence but isn't surprised when he doesn't. For a writer, a rapper, Daveed sure can have trouble getting words out. 

Rafael isn't built to ignore. He made a living off talking about his life, his feelings, his problems. He isn't built to do this and he whirls, looking up at Daveed who is gone, somewhere in the clouds before Rafael grabs a fistful of his t-shirt. 

“Diggs. What the fuck.” Daveed looks confused, and Rafael wants to slap him. He steps back, lets go of Daveed's shirt, digs in his pocket for the nickel bag and rolling paper. He shoves it at Daveed, wordless, then grabs it back. He doesn't want Daveed to have anything right now. 

“Are you- can I, you know, have a smoke?” Daveed looks half amused and it makes Rafael's throat thick with teary rage. He doesn't cry, it's not something he does. (Boys don't cry, that's something a man do. Maybe he's not a man yet.) He rolls one, barely looking at it, with his hands trembling. He spills a bit of the weed onto Anthony’s driveway, doesn't pay it any mind. Daveed takes it when he offers, lights up himself. Rafael watches him smoke, the devil on his shoulder cursing him out for always giving Daveed whatever he could. Not like he hasn't tried to love him less. But it's Diggs. 

“Rafa. Listen.” Damn it. Why should he listen, why now. He does, though. He always will. He cocks his head at Daveed, waiting. Daveed takes a drag, looking over Rafa’s head into the last of the setting sun. “My therapist, you know,” Daveed hates talking about therapy. He's embarrassed by it, by the whole thing. That's why Rafael has to hunt for Daveed’s bottles of medication, force a pill down his throat every morning. “She says I'm codependent.”

Codependent. It's a big word. Feels like a word Rafael has used in a poem. It doesn't feel good in his mouth when he moves his lips to the syllables. 

“Codependent?” 

“To you.” Daveed is still looking into the dying rays of sun. Rafael doesn't know what he means. 

“What does that mean.” It doesn't sound like he's asking a question, and maybe he isn't because he knows. And he's mad, put out, thoroughly pissed off at the idea that a woman who Daveed drops 200 dollars an hour on would tell him that Rafael isn't good for him. He's boiling. 

“Just. Like. I need you around. I don't function well when you aren't around.” Rafael bites his lip. He doesn't want to cry. 

“So?” Rafael's voice sounds desperate. He can't have Daveed cutting him off because he stupidly, stupidly thinks it's what's best. “So?” Daveed takes another pull of the smoke. “So what, Diggs?”

“So I should distance myself. Or something.” Rafael's veins feel like ice. 

“No, that, that's bullshit.” Don't. Don't. Don't. Please don't. 

“I'm just trying to protect you.” Rafael is livid, he's crying. Finally. He's finally broken. How is this protecting him? Daveed sees the tears, tries to pull him into a hug. Rafael goes crazy, a little bit crazy, in his arms, fists connecting with strong muscle of a chest. Again and again. Daveed doesn't try to stop it. Daveed holds him. Rafael cries and says no, no. Because, no, no, he can never feel like this again. 

They get into a screaming fight. The kind that hasn't happened since Daveed moved to New York for Hamilton and Rafael felt so abandoned, so alone, so jealous though he'd never admit that. The fights are always the parts of their relationship that makes Rafael feel like one half of a couple. More so than the back rubs, more so than the sex that happens sometimes. Every so often. When Daveed’s back is so tense that Rafael’s hands can't work it out, or when Rafael is drowning inside himself and needs somebody close. Maybe it wasn't supposed to end in love, but damn it, Rafael loves Daveed. Maybe not in the way where he wants them to be a couple, but in the way where he needs him and wants to be needed back. Maybe that's why he's screaming with his throat raw, tears on his face, his neck. Because Daveed pulling away, not needing him, will remove the Jenga block from the very bottom of Rafael’s stack, sending him crashing down. 

“This is just fucking like you, Rafael! You're selfish, always so selfish. You never want what's best for me. You're just ignoring something I need for my fucking- mental health, yknow?” Daveed’s voice drops quiet at the last part. Embarrassed. How can Daveed say these things to him? Rafael’s chest is heaving with unwanted sobs. 

“What the fuck? That's bullshit, man!” He can't get it out between sobs. “I've done nothing but be here for you. I moved to fucking New York when you got into this fucking musical!”

“I never asked that of you! You didn't want me to do it at all! You'd rather I stayed broke and hungry with you than make anything of myself.” Daveed says the last part in a cold, cold voice that's meant to exterminate.

“Oh.” Rafael can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips. “So I haven't made anything of myself?”

“That's not what I'm saying, Cash.” Rafael feels his face crumple. 

“Don't call me that!” Daveed doesn't get his nickname. He doesn't get a single piece of him. 

“You're successful, okay, Rafael?” It's worse, though, when Daveed uses his full name. 

“But you're more successful, and now you don't have time for me, and now you're listening to a shrink, who you only have because all that success fucking ruined you, instead of listening to your best friend!” Rafael says it so rapidly that he wouldn't be surprised if Daveed didn't catch a word. But he does, because that's what they both do. Talk fast and listen faster. 

“And what the fuck are you trying to tell me, then.” Daveed’s voice is soft, livid. 

“That you shouldn't distance yourself from me because that's bullshit because you can't because I need you to be my best friend and you need me and-“

“But that's the problem!” Daveed cuts off his rambling. “I need you, or something, and then when you're gone I’m not even, I don't know, getting out of bed, and that's not fucking healthy! I have to learn to live by myself. Be my own person.” Rafael is hyperventilating now. 

“Oh, that's what that shrink told you? Well does she fucking know that, that-“ Rafael can't come up with anything but, no, he can't, he needs Daveed. 

“Look, Rafael, I don't know how to get this through your head. Someday for some reason you aren't going to be around and I have to be able to get out of bed when that happens.”

“You love me.” Rafael says it, accusatory and disbelieving, like he's just figured out the missing piece. “If you didn't you wouldn't have that fucking problem.” Rafael laughs because he's figured it out, and it's a good thing, probably. 

“No, what-“ But Rafael is sure he's hit the jackpot, and it sends relief through him. 

“Normal best friends aren't- what's the stupid word- codependent. You love me.”

“Rafael. Listen. You aren't listening.”

“Come on Diggs.”

“Rafa.”

“You lo-“

“Goddamnit Rafael! Shut up, just, shut up.” Daveed has never said that to him. Rafael is shrinking. “I don't love you! I do not fucking love you!” Rafael hears himself gasp, sharp. 

“Daveed,” They both whirl around. It's Pippa, mouth a perfect o as she stares at them. Rafael didn't hear her come up. His heart breaks in his chest, hurts more than anything. He turns away from them to leave. It's dark and he's drunk and he doesn't know where he's going but he doesn't care. 

“Rafael, wait-“ Pippa catches his wrist. 

“Get off.” He doesn't want to yell at Pippa. He doesn't want to look at Daveed. She does let go, thank god, thank god. As he walks away down the mile long driveway he hears her calling Lin. Don't, don't, don't, he thinks. Just let me go. 

___

Lin finds him, a heap on the ground against the side of a building two blocks away from the house. He takes Rafael home, or, back to his hotel room, in silence. Rafael is grateful. When Lin pulls up in front of the building Rafael turns to him. 

“Did you all hear?” Lin nods, worry in the lines of his face. He doesn't say anything for another moment. 

“Go to bed, yeah? Take some Advil.” Rafael nods, stumbles getting out of the car. Lin waits to watch him open the heavy double doors of the building and drives away. 

___

Rafael falls asleep on top of the blankets with his clothes on, all the way down to his Chucks. He wakes up after noon with an animal carcass taste in his mouth and eyes swollen from crying. It's bullshit, the whole thing. Being thirty and actually feeling a hangover when he wakes up. Being thirty and waking up alone after his best friend yelled that he does not love him. Rafael's whole life is bullshit. He throws up a few times into the toilet. Usually Daveed would be here, and between the two of them they'd be able to locate painkillers and water glasses and room service to cure themselves with grease-laden breakfast sandwiches. But today Rafael is alone, alone with the nail-gun pain in his head and the room spinning. 

He finally manages to shower. He cries a little when the hot water touches him, cries and hits the wall with a fist. Stupid him and his stupid assumptions. Stupid Daveed and his stupid shrink. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He puts on the dumb hotel robe when he gets out, remembers photos he has on his phone, selfies of him and Daveed posing in these robes. Why does that boy have to be stuck so deep in every facet of Rafael's life? It's not fair. Not fair. He sits on the couch and watches mindless tv with the volume way down. Orders room service at around seven because his stomach has begun to gnaw in on itself. He gets a burger, and then a side salad because he can still hear Daveed lecturing him on the importance of fresh foods in his diet. He eats it, inhales it, and falls asleep on the couch, feeling like a pathetic sack of shit that deserves to die. 

___

“Rafael? How ya doing, man?” It's Anthony, over the phone. Rafael picked up when he saw the call come through, muscle memory that bit him in the ass the second Anthony spoke. He doesn't want to talk to anyone, especially not anyone who witnessed the “I do not fucking love you” scene. 

“Okay.” He's too tired to say more. Deep-down-inside tired. 

“You sure?” Rafael does not want to discuss his inner emotional turmoil with Anthony. He doesn't want to discuss anything. 

“Yeah, Ant, I’m doing really spectacular, all things considered.” Daveed always told him his sarcasm is like a land mine. Kills. 

“Raf, man, I’m really… sorry. About all that. It sucks.” Anthony sounds uncomfortable. Rafael wonders if Jasmine put him up to this. 

“Yeah.”

“Were you and Diggs… you know, a thing?” Rafael laughs a little, more like a bark than a laugh. 

“You mean, were we sleeping together? Occasionally.” Rafael wonders if there's a stage of grief where you stop giving a single fuck because he could not care less right now. 

“Oh- oh, well.” Anthony sounds taken aback. Rafael doesn't care. “Were you… dating?” Rafael snorts. 

“No.” 

“Did you want to?”

“No.” Rafael can practically hear Anthony’s confusion over the phone. He's not the only confused one. Rafael’s feelings don't make sense to himself. 

“So, what…”

“He's my best friend, Ant. And then he was ignoring me. And then he told me he had to abandon my ass for his mental health, whatever that means, and then…”

“Then the ‘I don't love you’.” It's stings to hear it said aloud. 

“Yeah. That.” 

“Raf, want me to come over? I'll bring some alcohol.”

“No, thanks, but… no.” Rafael hangs up the phone without a real goodbye and doesn't feel bad about it because he doesn't have feelings anymore. 

___ 

Rafael is scared of the dark. It's not something he tells people, but Daveed knew. (He's started thinking about Daveed in the past tense. Like he's dead. It's unsettling.) And when they were staying in hotel rooms together, he'd always leave the bathroom door cracked with the light on for Rafa. Rafael had never brought it up, but damn, he appreciated it. Tonight he has every light in the room on, including the ones in the bathroom and in the closet (the doors are open, because, as irrational as it is, Rafael can't shake the fear that there might be something in there to get him), but the hotel room still feels dark in the corners. He doesn't like being here by himself. He turns on the TV, the soft hum of voices on the Food Network channel comforting him a bit. It's really late, after two in the morning, but Rafael can't get to sleep. He lay in bed for a while, squeezing his eyes shut in a vain attempt to drift off, to no avail. He's always had issues with getting to sleep, ever since he was a kid in the Bay. Daveed would always spray posh-ass essential oils around, ones that were supposed to aid sleep. Rafael made fun of them endlessly, but now he wishes he had some. They helped. Or maybe that was just Daveed, who swept all the fear out of an unfamiliar room with a twitch of his hand. Damn. Rafael misses him. 

He does drift into sleep at some point, on the couch for the second night in a row. He doesn't know what time it is when he's awakened by a quick knock at the door, the blackout curtains concealing the color of the sky outside and all the lights still heating up the room. It's probably housekeeping, something like that, because Rafael never fails to forget to put out the “do not disturb” door sign. He closes his eyes again, thinking that he can ignore them until they leave. He thinks whoever is there has, but then there's another knock on the door, more insistent. Rafael gets up, grumbling, sleep weakening his legs and leading him into the coffee table that sits in front of him. 

“Fuck.” He winces, shin smarting at the hit as a third knock reverberates through the room. He really needs to remember the damn sign. He takes an irritated glance through the little peephole and immediately steps back, throat prickling. 

Daveed. He's here, here knocking on the door of Rafael’s room with what looks like coffee in his hands. He's here, why the fuck is he here? Another knock. Rafael feels all shaky, heart hammering like when you nearly fall off something but recover your footing just in time. 

He's not going to open the door. He wants to. But he's not going to. Another knock, knock, knock. 

“Rafael Casal. I know you're in there.” Daveed and his voice. Fuck Daveed and his voice. Knock, knock, knock. The noise driving into the base of Rafael’s spine. Knock. Knock. “Cash. I have to tell you something.” Knock. 

Rafael can't stand the sound. He unlatches the door, pulls it open as he turns away. He doesn't want to look at Daveed. 

“Rafa.” Daveed sounds… teary. Throat thick. It's almost enough to break Rafael, to send him whirling back around to face him. 

“Why are you here?” Rafael’s voice borders on cracking as he speakers to the carpeted ground, to his bare feet. 

“Cause I have to. Tell. You something.” Rafael feels himself going cold, then hot, cold, then hot. Daveed can't do this, can't crush him with a yell then crawl back and expect Rafael to be okay, to listen. Rafael won't let him. Will he?

“Tell me, then.” Rafael is yielding to Daveed, to his desperate voice. Damn it. Damn it, Casal. 

“Will you… will you look at me?” Daveed is pleading. And Rafael wants to refuse, wants to say no, but it's like a fishing wire is pulling him around by the ankles as he stumbles to face him. Daveed takes in a gulp of air. 

“I lied to you.” Rafael's mind is racing. 

“What?” What?

“I lied. To you. I lied about- about- I lied about loving you.” Daveed steps forward, his expression helpless. He shoves the coffee into Rafael's hands, and Rafael's mind isn't moving fast enough to process this. 

“What do you- why?” Daveed looks disheveled, exhausted, his hair all shoved up in a snapback and that Oakland sweatshirt that matches the one he bought Rafael a few birthdays ago hanging off him. He's moving his hands, tapping them across the cuffs of his sleeves and the pocket of his jeans, like he's checking for his keys, or a pulse. 

“Listen, just, hear me out. Okay?” Rafael looks at him, expectant. He wants to be more angry than he is, feels like he should be furious. He's too tired for furious. “It's just. I'm so scared to, to need anybody. My mom, she always told me not to depend on anyone, you know. To depend on myself, and-“ Daveed’s breath hitches. Rafael shifts his feet. The coffee is too hot in his palms.  
“Depending on you is… scary. I'm scared to need you, Rafael. I'm scared and I pulled away, and I lied about- about loving you because, because I can't say it. It's terrifying.” Rafael is numb. 

“Daveed…” Daveed raises a hand, doesn't look right at him. 

“No, no, let me- say this, the whole drive over I was just, um, rehearsing, and. Just.” Rafael nods, looking at him. “I hate the fact that I depend on somebody. It makes me feel, I don't know, weak. But I do. Depend on you. Maybe I am codependent and maybe I do love you because you were gone and I, I haven't been fucking. Sleeping.” Daveed drags a hand over his face, shoulders crumpling like tinfoil torn wrong from the box. Rafael is speechless, boneless. 

“I can leave.” Daveed says. “I can go, I should go.” He turns to leave, but Rafael’s hand darts out to catch his arm on its own accord. Daveed looks at him, eyes all shiny and questioning. 

“Wait. I'm not sleeping either.” Rafael’s voice sounds hoarse; he hasn't been using it much. Daveed lets out a breath, a gasping sigh, and squeezes his eyes shut in a fending-off-tears way. He doesn't say anything. Rafael doesn't say anything, but steps forward and closes the door behind Daveed. Then he's holding his arms open, and Daveed is sort of falling into them, and they stand like that for a long time, keeping each other up. 

The hotel room doesn't seem as dark that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment your opinion and whether I should do a sequel to this fic!


End file.
